Pella, Ia. — Elected officials need business experience, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in Iowa on Wednesday, setting up a contrast between himself, the current field and a Texan who could become his chief rival.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if people in Washington had actually spent a good part of their career working in the real economy? They’d have the experience of being in a small business or a big business or some business, some enterprise of some kind and understood how the world works,” Romney said during a “business roundtable” campaign stop at Vermeer Corp. in Pella.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is expected to make his presidential intentions clear Saturday in South Carolina, has spent a decade in the Texas governor’s office. Before that, he was lieutenant governor, agriculture commissioner and a state legislator.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and the national GOP front-runner, is in Iowa for a two-day visit centered on the nationally televised Fox News debate at 8 tonight. He hits the Iowa State Fair this morning, accompanied at his request by Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Asked on Wednesday about Perry, whom Romney has referred to in the past as a great governor, Romney answered: “I’ll get a full view, I’m sure, of all the successes of Governor Perry. He’s a fine man and a fine governor, and the record of Texas I think speaks for itself.”

David Carney, a strategist for Perry, said the Texan has years of farming and ranching experience.

“After the Air Force, the governor returned to his family’s farm and became a partner with his dad,” Carney told the Register in response to Romney’s comments. “Moreover, his experience in controlling spending, balancing budgets without new taxes, and job creation are what most voters are going to carefully review before voting.”

Romney told the Iowa business leaders: “I think I’m the right guy to be the Republican nominee for president in part because I spent 25 years in the private sector, and I know how the economy works. I’ve had the occasion to lead four different enterprises successfully, and I’ve also had the experience of working in government and helping lead a state, and those experiences I think qualify me to get this economy going again.”

The four enterprises are the management consulting firm Bain & Co., the private equity firm Bain Capital, the Salt Lake City Olympics and the state of Massachusetts.

Asked what he’d do to fix the economy if he were in the White House today, Romney said he would listen to business people and craft a series of economic proposals.

“I sure as heck wouldn’t be on a bus tour if I were the president of the United States,” he told reporters.

That was a dig at President Barack Obama, who will do an Aug 15-17 “economic bus tour” of the Midwest, including a stop in Iowa, to “hear directly from Americans, including local families and small business owners” and discuss ways to grow the economy, according to a White House news release.

Romney said he’s confident he would win the White House if Republicans choose him as their nominee – and that he would claim victory in the swing state of Iowa in 2012.

Referring to Obama, he said, “I would probably acknowledge if I were him that the policies of the last 2½ years were exactly the opposite of what America needed. Does anyone really think that what America needed at a time like this was a new entitlement called Obamacare with a trillion dollars of additional spending?”

That’s ironic, said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Massachusetts never recovered jobs it lost in the 2001 and 2003 recessions and ranked 47th in the nation in job creation during Romney’s term as governor, she said.

“(Romney’s) track record is really almost nonexistent,” she said in a phone interview with the Register. “This is a candidate who has not been supportive of American jobs.”

Obama has created jobs for 17 straight months, including 2.4 million private-sector jobs, she said.

“And for (Romney), it’s just so hypocritical and transparent for him to criticize the health care reform law that he championed in his own state,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Voters see right through that.”

Des Moines businessman David Oman, who supported Mike Huckabee for president four years ago but now is solidly behind Romney, organized the roundtable. He said he was happy to hear Romney say Iowans will “see more of me from time to time between now and January.”

With a grin, Romney told reporters: “I’d like to do darn well in those caucuses if I’m able to do so.”

Romney, who was last in Iowa for a forum sponsored by a business partnership on May 27, has faced some criticism from Iowans for his decision to not participate in Saturday’s Iowa straw poll, an event he won four years ago. His name will be on the ballot, but he will not appear on stage, and his campaign is making no effort to bus supporters to the Ames event.